Tuesday, November 4, 2014

5TH UPDATE: The Council Races

5th UPDATE:
The final tallies are in...
The only nail biter race appears to be in Eureka's Ward 3, where challenger Kim Bergel trails incumbent Mike Newman by just 104 votes. It's currently unclear how many provisional and vote by mail ballots remain to be counted in Eureka, so it's hard to tell if Bergel has a chance of bridging the gap at this point. But, the race is currently too close to call.

4th UPDATE:
The Humboldt County Elections Office recently released its fourth report, and local city council races haven't budged. In fact, the only races to change at all in this most recent report were those in Arcata.

3rd UPDATE:
With 64.49 percent of precincts reporting, local council races haven't changed much, though Eureka's Ward 3 race continues to narrow. There, challenger Kim Bergel has whittled incumbent Mike Newman's lead down to 104 votes. It's unclear, however if any Eureka precincts are outstanding and how many ballots have yet to be counted.

Over in Eureka's 5th Ward, challenger Natalie Arroyo has this thing in the bag, sitting on 61.60 percent of the vote to incumbent Chet Albin's 37.86 percent.

Elsewhere, the first results from the precincts are beginning to trickle in, though none have yet caused dramatic swings.

2ND UPDATE:
With the second round of returns posted, most council races in the county remain unchanged, as it takes a while to physically get election equipment and memory cards to the county office. The exception is in the Eureka races.

Challenger Natalie Arroyo has built on her early lead with the first round of precinct results, and now leads incumbent Chet Albin 59.55 percent to 39 percent with 4,784 ballots cast. After taking almost 56 percent of the vote by mail/early voting ballots, Arroyo took a whopping 63.52 percent of the first ballots counted from the polls, making her lead seem insurmountable in the race to become Eureka's next 5th Ward representative.

Over in the 3rd Ward, challenger Kim Bergel has cut into incumbent Mike Newman's early lead, and now trials by about five points, 47.34 percent to Newman's 52.19 percent. Bergel edged Newman in the early poll results, taking 52.33 percent of the first Election Day ballots counted. Whether that rate holds, and whether it's enough to push Bergel over the top, remains to be seen. She currently trails by 231 votes.

UPDATE:
Despite mixed early results for the Eureka incumbents, Mike Newman and Chet Albin were both chipper and upbeat at an elections return party at the Sea Grill when the Journal caught up with them recently.

Newman, who early returns have leading challenger Kim Bergel by 14 points, said he is “guardedly optimistic” about his chances. Albin, who is trailing challenger Natalie Arroyo by 12 points, said he wasn’t following the results but had been told he was behind. But undaunted, Albin said he’d worked hard on the campaign trail and hoped the sweat he’s put in over the last month will pay off at the polls.

But the incumbent — who was appointed to the post by Mayor Frank Jager last year — seemed more interested in talking about an exciting development in his quest to bring cruise ships to Eureka and to secure a tenant for the long-vacant restaurant space in the Fisherman’s Terminal Building at the foot of C Street. (On the cruise ship front, the county apparently agreed to pony up $10,000 to help pay a lobbyist to work on getting some ships to add Humboldt Bay to their routes, while he says a tenant is very interested in putting an 84-seat restaurant in the city-owned Fisherman’s building.)

As to the election, Albin praised his opponent and smiled broadly when talking about running his first-ever political campaign. “I don’t think people realize how much work it is,” he said.

click to enlarge

PREVIOUSLY:
The first ballots have been tallied, and the runaway shocker of the evening so far is challenger Natalie Arroyo jumping out to a commanding early lead over incumbent Chet Albin in the race to become Eureka's next Ward 5 council member.

Only 2,509 votes have been cast in the race so far, but all those ballots are of the early voting/vote-by-mail variety, which tend to trend conservative, making Arroyo's lead look daunting for Albin.

But there are other races...

Throughout Humboldt County, new leaders are being elected tonight, with contested council races in Eureka, Ferndale, Fortuna and Arcata, as well as a mayoral scorcher in Ferndale. Across the board, there's a lot of new blood out there. While both Eureka races feature incumbents, there's only one in the race for two seats open in Ferndale, one in each of the races for three open seats in both Fortuna and Arcata.